Impediments Confronting a Translator in Translating

Many of translation problems are related to linguistics, the special characteristics of language. Language is part of culture, so in addition to the other cultural factors, the special characteristics of the respective languages are also the factors might influence translation. 2. Social Culture In complexities of organization and social control, a translator is very frequently confronted by many difficulties in interpretation and equivalence, at times the problems of translation which involves social practices becomes very complex. Indeed, many translators, even those who recognize its interpretative or thematic function, would deny that translators are critics. 20 3. Religious Culture The problems in religious culture in translating the Qur’an often happen. Articles of clothing provide examples of material features that differ from one culture to another and may lead to translation difficulties as in words such as “Allah” God, “Jannah” paradise, “Naar” hell-fire relay distinct messages to different non- Muslim TL readers whose faith provides different theological meanings to these same words. Although there is no translational problem involved in rendering their surface denotative meanings into English, these words and their translations relay different mental images and expectations to both the SL and TL readers; the word Allah, for instance, has a number of componential features idiosyncratic to Islam. It designates above all the oneness of God, i.e. monotheism who has 99 attributes mentioned in 20 Peter Newmark, About Translation, Clevadon: Multilingual Matter LTD, 1980, p. 170 the Qur’an, the lord with whom no one else can be associated, and the creator of every thing including the prophets. 21 The Arabic word Allah is translated as God as Father, Son and holy Spirit reflect Christianity’s semantic componential features that fail to accommodate the Qur’anic notion of absolute monotheism. Therefore, Allah can not be translated into God. Allah is the name of the essence of absolute; it was known and used long before the arrival of Islam in Arab like Muhammad’s father name “Abdullah”. Allah in Arabic language has always used for one God, the Supreme Being, many views rejecting derivation of word Allah. In translating the Qur’an translators have to face plenty of impediments and obstacles. This is due to the uniqueness of Arabic language; which not inherent in order languages of the world. Abdul al-Majid Daryabadi, in his introduction to Tafsir Qur’an gave a clear outline as to how the translators confront impediments and obstacles while translating the Qur’an, particularly into English. A brief outline of discussion on this subject presented by him is given below: 1. There is a large number of Arabic verbs that cannot be translated into English verbs, such as, bakhila, asrafa, abtala, taghaa, and amaata etc. one has to perforce to render each of these words not by a single word, but by combination of words. 21 Susan Basnnet Edwin Gentzler, Translation and Religion Holy Untranslatable, Clevadon: Multilungual Matters LTD, 2005, p. 166 2. This is no equivalent substitute to the Arabic mudaari aorist in English, or for that matter, in any other language known to the translator. The Arabic mudaari is both present and future tenses combined, whereas on other languages including English a tense is either present or future. Thus, thousands of Arabic verbs are to be rendered into English as incompletely. 3. In the English language, there are only two numbers singular and plural. There is no single word to convey the sense of Arabic dual Tathniah in nouns as well as verbs, both in the second and the third persons. 4. There is comparative dearth of asma’al-faa’il nominal agents in English language, whereas they are abound in Arabic, muflihun, mu’jizun, qahitun, mustaqdimun, musyrikun, shakirun, and many similar words have to be rendered as adjectives or participles, not as substantives. 5. In Arabic language, the feminine plural in second and third persons is always distinguishable from the masculine. In English both genders are covered by “you” and “they”. 6. Repetition of synonyms, chiefly for the sake of emphasis, is of frequent occurrence in Arabic; in fact at times it is considerable literary merit and beauty. In English language no is sanction for it. Many such expressions as: Inna nahnu nazzalna al-dzikra literally means: Verily, We We We have revealed the admonition, Inna nahnu fa nuhyi wa numiitu literally means: verily, we We Quicken and cause death have to remain only partly translated. 22

H. Meaning, Word, and Diction

To understand the language writer needs to know the meaning of words and the morphemes that compose them. The writer also must know how the meanings of words combine into phrase and sentence meanings. Finally, writer must interpret the meaning of utterances in the context in which they are made. 23 The study of linguistic meaning of morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences is called by semantics. Subfields semantics are lexical semantic, which is concerned with the meaning of words and the meaning relationships among words, and phrasal or sentential semantics, which is concerned with the meaning of syntactic units larges than the word. The study of how the context affect meaning for example, how the sentence its cold in here comes to interpreted as “close the window” in certain situations is called by pragmatics. 24 There are two kinds of meaning such as: 1. Referential Meaning Referential meaning is the word as symbol which refers to object, events, abstracts, and relations. In the most studies of semantics, the science of meaning, the emphasis is upon the relative ambivalence of terms, their capacity to have many 22 Tahmeem Ushama, 1995, op. cit. 134 -135 23 Victoria Fromkin Robert Rodman, An Introduction to Language, Orlando: Cristopher P. Klein, 1998, p. 157 24 Ibid., 158 different meanings. For example, words such as red, chair, and man are discussed in terms of the variety of possibilities. While is undoubtedly quite true, the real point of all this is that in the actual usage of language there is no such prevailing ambivalence. In fact, in the most instances the surrounding context point out quite clearly which of these basic meanings of a word is intended. And it perhaps from this standpoint that he can best understands the true nature of the semantics structure of language”. 25 When the writer talks about textual meaning specification of the meaning of words, we are not talking in vague, nebulous terms. Rather, the linguistic context in the tense in which it is refereed to here has two very definite aspects in many cases, such as the grammatical construction syntactic marking, and the specific meaning word which is intended is marked by interaction of that term A is found in context of term B means that only sense of term A will fit Semiotic marking. In many instances the meaning terms is clearly indicated by the syntactic contractions in which they occur. Compare, for example, the following sets: a. He picked up a stone. a. They will stone him. b. He saw a cloud. b. The quarrel will cloud the issue. c. She has a beautiful face. c. He will face the audience. d. He fell in the water. d. Please, water the garden. The distinction meanings the terms stone, cloud, face, and water are very clearly marked by the occurrence of these terms in quite different construction, i.e. as 25 Eugene A. Nida Charles Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974, p. 56